Fierce outcry followed the recent early release of cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero, convicted of masterminding the abduction and slaying of U.S. anti-drug agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Now, in a case that has put international focus on Mexico’s criminal-justice system, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration is seeking to review a court’s decision to let the convict go.

Caro Quintero, former leader of the Guadalajara Cartel, walked out of a Mexican prison at 2 a.m. Aug. 9 with no public notice — and quickly disappeared after serving only 28 years of a 40-year sentence. A panel of three magistrates in the state of Guadalajara had overturned his conviction on a legal technicality, drawing furious protest in the United States.

The fallout has continued since then. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office has publicly called out those magistrates, saying in a statement that their reasoning was “absurd and illogical.” Prosecutors were not even notified of the drug trafficker’s release until eight hours after he left Puente Grande Penitentiary, according to the statement.

Nearly three decades after Camarena’s disappearance, the issue has awakened haunting memories and raised difficult questions for Camarena’s former colleagues.

“You don’t just let a drug lord leave,” said Salvador Leyva, a retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was on assignment in Mexico when Camarena was killed. “The judges should be investigated. Was he or she pressured by drug lords? Why would anybody after 28 years decide that whatever the (trial) court decided all of a sudden is wrong?”

Leyva, who currently lives in San Diego County, said he remembers Camarena’s kidnapping on Feb. 7, 1985, as if it happened yesterday. Two days after the abduction, Leyva found himself at the Guadalajara airport, watching as an armed and heavily jeweled man traded embraces with a Mexican federal police commander and proceeded to board a private jet.

As the plane began taxiing, the man lifted a bottle of champagne to Leyva and others on the tarmac and said, “Next time, bring better weapons,” Leyva recalled.

It wasn’t until the next day that Leyva learned the man’s identity: Caro Quintero. The cartel boss was eventually tracked to Costa Rica, brought back to Mexico and sentenced in 1989 by a Mexican federal court.

As Caro Quintero once again has gone missing, the reaction has been swift and fierce, placing pressure on the nine-month-old Peña Nieto administration.

Fueling anger in both the U.S. and Mexico was the court’s justification for overturning his conviction: Caro Quintero had been tried for Camarena’s death in a Mexican federal court, when the crime demanded a state trial because Camarena was not an accredited diplomat, according to the Aug. 7 ruling by the magistrates. In an unusual action, the Attorney General’s Office has publicly named all three of those judges: José Felix Dávalos, Lucio Lira Martínez and Rosa Lía Isabel Moreno.

Across Mexico, the drug lord’s release has been the subject of newscasts, newspaper headlines and talk shows featuring prominent political analysts. In a country where police and prosecutors have long served political interests, some are quick to see Caro Quintero’s newfound freedom as one more example of corruption and impunity.